A man called Roy Macey had been running things in the back in the day.
That’s what Patch told us in the empty darkness of the smoking area behind the club, which was just a bucketful of sand surrounded by poorly aimed filters like so many pale, flattened cockroaches.
Roy Macey had been the sort of career criminal that late-night, low-budget movies were still being made about. He controlled half the docks and owned property all over the capital. He dealt cocaine from his sleazy lap-dancing club in Soho and carried enough of the Metropolitan Police in his back pocket to never concern himself with the dreaded boot at the door. He didn’t hide. He dressed in fine suits, shook hands with esteemed Members of Parliament and donated considerable amounts to London-based charities. He was just another philanthropist whose disparagers had a knack for sleeping in burning buildings, tumbling off bridges and tripping onto the tracks of the London Overground.
‘Macey didn’t need to get banged up to control the gear going into the Scrubs back when I was first there in ’86,’ Patch said, repeatedly turning his good eye back over his left shoulder as if he expected to see the aged crook lurking in the dark. ‘Prisons were built to keep people from getting out. They weren’t designed to stop things coming in. I remember when dead birds were fashionable.’
‘Dead birds?’ Zara grimaced.
‘Oh yeah! You’d be sitting out in the yard, minding your own business when bonk, pigeon lands at your feet, like something out of Monty Python. Seconds later a con would walk up, cool as you like, and stuff it down his knickers. The birds were hollowed out, crammed full of gear, sewn up and given the old fast-bowl over the wall. Course, now there are drones that can do the same thing. The Smack Spitters, now they had a good system. These blokes would get loaded on heroin right before getting sent down so that it’d show up in their bloodwork and they’d get put on a rehab course inside. They’d queue up for their cup of methadone every morning, hold it in their gobs and then spit it back out in their cell. Save up a week’s worth of that and you’ve got a powerful dose to sell on to the junkies.’
‘And people actually wanted to buy that?’ Zara said distastefully.
Patch shrugged. ‘I’ve heard it all, me. There was this old biddy visiting her grandson up in Strangeways. When she got searched they found half a kilo of charlie stuffed right up her –’
‘All right, Patch,’ I said, settling him down. ‘Surely Macey can’t still be controlling the drugs in the Scrubs. People in his career don’t tend to last too long.’
Patch shook his head, smoking hard. ‘Roy’s been out on the Costa del Crime for twenty years now. There’s a Nando’s where his nightclub used to be, and all his bent coppers are either retired or dead. Whatever empire he’d built up the old way was dismantled and taken over by these smaller gangs dealing in local areas, every man ruthlessly defending his own corner. But word has it that Roy’s running out of money, and he’s spotted an opportunity back in London.’
‘Which is?’
He scratched the topmost of his chins and lowered his voice. ‘You ever seen that film The Warriors?’
‘Long time ago,’ I said. ‘Some dystopian New York City divided into dozens of street gangs?’
‘Exactly. Love that film. There’s this one bloke in it, Cyrus, who does the maths one day and realises that unifying all these separate gangs would create an army three times the size of the city’s police force. He figures that you don’t need to be wasting time squabbling for turf if you all join together instead. That way it’s all your turf, you know? So, this Cyrus calls a truce and offers the olive branch or what have you to all these different gangs. That’s the plan, anyway. One gang. One business. One army.’
I cleared my throat and tried not to sound too condescending. ‘You believe that Roy Macey, some old forgotten lag, has come back across the Channel after twenty years and asked these lifelong rivals to simply forget their differences, hold hands and work together?’
‘I didn’t say that,’ he hissed. ‘For a start, this is the twenty-first century, Rook. Roy will be running things from the comfort of his yacht in Puerto Banus. He’ll never step foot on English soil again.’
‘Then how would he maintain day-to-day control?’ Zara asked, apparently more impressed than I was. ‘Surely he’d need to be here on the street to keep discipline.’
‘The Macey name still carries a lot of weight around these parts,’ he said, his voice low. ‘Enough to get people listening. But could be scare stories.’
‘Scare stories?’ she asked.
‘Right.’ He leaned closer. ‘They say it’s his kids. Real chips off the old block. Twins. Personally, I don’t buy it. I know everybody, and I haven’t met a man who’s actually seen them. These twins, they’re myth, a couple of ghosts to make the Kray twins look like Girl Guides. But that’s how it works in this game. The Krays only ever killed two low-level gangsters fifty years back and they’re still legends. The Macey twins don’t even have to exist to incite terror.’
‘Urban folklore,’ Zara said.
‘Couldn’t have put it better myself. As for these gangs holding hands and putting differences aside, well, it never works like that. These Cutthroats you’re on about, they’re just kids. Disorganised before Macey’s offer came along, but game. Last year, the Yardies made a move on their turf. Now we’re talking about serious Jamaican gangsters here.’
‘Oh, I know the Yardies,’ I said ruefully.
‘As did they. These Cutthroats knew the danger. A few of these Yardie lieutenants were sitting in their M3 one night when two kids, and I do mean children, put so many bullets in their car that the fire brigade had to saw the roof off like one of them motorway pile-ups. These kids are fearless. Walk a mile down the road into E10, start asking your questions, and you’ll find that out soon enough.’
‘So, they are from E10?’
There were footsteps passing on the pavement beyond the building. Patch waited, statuesque, until they’d faded before continuing.
‘Started out there in the towers in Leyton,’ he said. ‘Each group alone is madder than a box of frogs, but unified … Used to be a risky little business, dealing, not that I ever indulged. You’d move a bit of gear and use the profits to buy more. Rinse and repeat. Eventually, you’d either get killed or get caught and do a bit of bird, and someone would take your place. Then it got so anyone could be a gangster, and all you needed was a phone line and a ready supply of drugs. The old boy Macey is changing that. Things are going back to how they used to be. Organised. Controlled from the top.’
‘Controlling the whole of east London, you mean, and using these Cutthroats as a front?’ Zara asked.
‘East London?’ Patch shook his head. ‘Think bigger. This is the age of instant communication. We’re talking about a system with the potential to swallow the country.’
‘Oh, like county lines offending?’ Zara said. ‘There was a National Crime Agency report I read last year. “County Lines Violence, Exploitation and Drug Supply”.’
‘I read that too,’ I added. ‘Inner-city gangs exploiting vulnerable people to branch out and sell drugs in small towns beyond the Home Counties.’
‘In a nutshell,’ Patch said. ‘After Macey left, the war went back to being about which ends you come from.’ He paused. ‘You know what ends are, don’t you?’
‘Territory,’ Zara answered. ‘Home turf. Estates. My end would be St Ann’s, Nottingham.’
‘Smart lady. Every end had its own gang fighting postcode against postcode, spraying bullets into playgrounds just to hit one target. It was all about bling, fast cars and guns, and members had a limited shelf life. Then along comes Macey’s truce, and now these bastards are growing. Soon they’ll have enough to take over the country, one town at a time, with east London as the distribution hub.’
‘What about existing drug trades?’ Zara asked. ‘Surely those towns will already have established set-ups.’
‘Same way Britain built an empire,’ he said, ‘and that wasn’t with cups of tea and scones. They’ll dispatch workers and spread into any place they can.’
‘Including the Scrubs,’ I said quietly, checking around; in the shadows, Patch’s paranoia was infectious.
‘You know me, Rook. It serves a man of my talents to keep up to speed with these sorts of things. I’m telling you this because we go back, but I don’t want to be any sort of witness in whatever you’re into. You two aren’t Starsky and Hutch, and I’m not Huggy Bear. I don’t want my name coming up in or out of the courtroom.’
‘Never. All we’re looking for is a nudge in the right direction.’
He nodded, spinning the last of his cigarette into the bucket; it glowed brightly for a second or two before suffocating. ‘What’s the best way to start a burger business on a street full of McDonald’s? How do you make an impact when there’s already a business that customers are loyal to?’
‘By offering a better burger?’ I suggested.
‘Maybe. A quicker way would be to put a dozen of your employees on that street and tell them to stick pubes in every sodding Big Mac they can get their hands on.’
‘A hostile takeover,’ Zara whispered. ‘You’re saying these Cutthroats sent a group of their dealers into prison on purpose?’
‘It wasn’t no win for the police …’ I muttered, echoing Andre’s words.
Zara shook her head. ‘I don’t believe that anybody would choose to go to prison.’
‘Some people aren’t built for civvy life,’ Patch replied. ‘For some, prison is like a Friday night out. They know everybody in there and get to shoot the shit with mates they haven’t seen in a while. The maths, well, that’s a no-brainer. You can work your knackers off in a lousy chicken shop for the next two years and earn thirty grand, minus tax, or you can go inside, forget about where next month’s rent is coming from, eat three square meals a day and earn two hundred grand tax-free, which’ll be waiting for you on the outside. These people wouldn’t see that sort of money in a lifetime working straight. As for walls, there’ve always been walls holding them back. Least they can see these ones. Accept them.’
‘What about officers?’ I asked.
‘Screws? Same thing. They’re mopping up suicides and stabbings, getting spat on every night. Somebody offers them a few grand to bring something in. Just once. That’s a quarter of their salary in one morning for putting something in their back pocket. They do it. Take their kids on that Disney holiday they’ve been promising them for years. Clear a couple of credit cards. Only, once they’ve started on that road, the cons have got something to hold over them.’
‘And you end up in somebody’s pocket,’ I said.
‘Deeper and deeper.’ He looked around and sighed. ‘I should be getting back inside. People talk. It was good seeing you, Rook, but let’s keep it social next time, yeah?’
‘Sure, Patch.’ I shook his hand; it was incredibly large and rough as bark.
‘Before you go …’ Zara said slowly. ‘I might’ve missed something from your burger analogy. You said that getting your employees into the restaurants was only the first part of the takeover. Then you’d corrupt the existing product?’
‘Smart.’ He smiled thinly. ‘Didn’t I say she was smart, Rook? Pays more attention than you do.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You’re saying they chose to go to prison so they could corrupt the supply and win customers away from the existing product?’
‘Maybe. What happened could’ve been coincidence. Smoking chemicals is risky.’
‘Holy shit!’ Zara gasped, and it echoed loudly off the bricks around us. She lowered her voice. ‘They didn’t just want to attract new customers to their product.’ She turned to me and her eyes were bright. ‘They tainted the existing product to kill any customer who remained loyal to the old dealers. The killed them. They killed them all.’